Via Riba Rambles, I see that last month, Northwestern University’s Anthony D’Amato suggested that more porn leads to less rape. D’Amato points out that rape prevalence (as measured by the federal government’s big National Crime Victimization Survey) has gone down in recent years (his comparison – he calls the decline in rape “steeper than the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression” – may be the single least relevant comparison I’ve ever read).
D’Amato points out that even as rape prevalence has declined, porn consumption has gone up:
There is, however, one social factor that correlates almost exactly with the rape statitistics [sic]. The American public is probably not ready to believe it. My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape. The correlation is inverse: the more pornography, the less rape. It is like the inverse correlation: the more police officers on the street, the less crime.
The pornographic movie “Deep Throat” which started the flood of X-rated VHS and later DVD films, was released in 1972. Movie rental shops at first catered primarily to the adult film trade. Pornographic magazines also sharply increased in numbers in the
1970s and 1980s. Then came a seismic change: pornography became available on the new internet. Today, purveyors of internet porn earn a combined annual income exceeding the total of the major networks ABC, CBS, and NBC.
(Okay, the “sic” was cheap of me. Whaddaya want? I’m running a blog here. G’way.)
Three problems with D’Amato’s theory:
1) During recent years, the NCVS has found a steep decline in all violent crime, not just rape. It seems likely that whatever’s causing the decline in all violent crime measured by the NCVS, is also causing the decline in rape measured by the NCVS; but it seems unlikely that pornography reduces all violent crime.
2) The NCVS measurement of rape prevalence is crap. Many other studies – including two major studies conducted by the Federal government – have found much higher rates of rape prevalence than the NCVS. Particularly notable is this study, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which directly compared the NCVS’s methodology for measuring rape prevalence with modern “best practice” survey design – and found that the NCVS vastly undercounted rape.
(D’Amato does say that the decrease in rape is collaborated by other sources, but he doesn’t cite any specific sources other than the NCVS).
3) D’Amato has no measurement of porn prevalence other than internet access, nor does he do any real statistical analysis. In contrast, studies with sophisticated statistical analysis and more accurate measures of porn usage – such as the study published in Four Theories of Rape in American Society – tend to find that porn usage has little or no correlation with rape prevalence.
D’Amato has one good point; there is no evidence that the rise in internet access (and, presumably, in porn usage) has been accompanied by a rise in rape prevalence. That makes it seem unlikely that porn is a cause of rape, as some radical feminists have suggested.
My own belief is that whatever porn’s effects on rape prevalence are, they’re probably too small to be measured.
UPDATE: Abyss2Hope and Feminist Law Professors both have excellent posts critiquing D’Amato’s paper.
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where no mouse fears an elephant. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
Sailorman, I’ve linked to this before, but you weren’t on the blog at the time. I urge you to read it and to reconsider, at least for the time it takes to read the article, that your view of porn films and the clear line you make between a faked rape and a real one isn’t there for a lot of critics. Even some male critics.
Just A John ? Pornography and Men’s Choices
I submit that porn films, yes, even mainstream ones, even the “softcore” ones that were on cable when I was a teen back in the 1980s, deliberately make the line between consent and force blurry. Much of our culture does that, but the deliberate blurring is much more obvious in porn films than it often is elsewhere– once you know how to look for it. The author of the article I linked to goes into considerable detail as to why the difference between supposedly “nice” and “nasty” porn films is largely academic if the point is to examine it for negative impact on relations between men and women. I’m not quoting those paragraphs here because some folks may find them triggering. I’ll leave it up to Amp to decide whether quoting anything that graphic is good manners in this context or not. Personally, I’d rather not quote it here.
I don’t want to use you, a male, as a hypothetical in this equation any more than I want to use Josh as a real example in this equation. You are both men, and the dynamics at work for men in porn isn’t the same as it is for women. No way. Furthermore, I don’t know why I should give a rat’s ass about whether or not I can prove that somebody was literally raped at gunpoint to produce a film or not. First of all, rape is extremely difficult to prove in this culture even in “ideal” circumstances. Anyone who thinks that in a world where women in all walks of life have miserable odds of achieving justice, it’s going to be any easier for a woman who fucks on film for money to get justice– well, I think that person is lying to themselves, big time.
Second of all, I am not diminished in any way by simply avoiding a film like Deep Throat. Avoiding it for the simple reason that I cannot be sure if Damaino arranged for actors to rape Linda Boreman. I can open a book, look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, use my imagination— the options are more or less limitless if I want something that produces arousal in me.
It depresses me that you and others like you devote so much energy to defending the existence of these films and your own subjective definition of what constitues “real” rape, instead of devoting energy to Qgrrl’s question: What male privileges are you defending, at the cost of women’s quality of life and human dignity ? When you are ready to think about that, get back to me. The rest is tapdancing on your part, and I’m not interested.
Sam, no problem. I get speechless a lot, too. Even when the b.s. is predictable, there’s so damn much of it that it’s good to have others around with the mop and bucket. And actually, I think your writing has improved a lot in the last few years.
Sadly, the issues you mention in Norway didn’t even occur to me;Even though I just got back from a trip where I stayed in a regular chain hotel that had porn films available in the room along with all the other films you’d expect. Even though I saw the cleaning staff in the halls every day. I can’t even begin to imagine what would go through my head in a job where everyone tells me that the customer is king, I need my income and so on– and there in the hotel room I’m paid to clean stands some shitheel who thinks I should join him to watch some shitty film– or worse. Grrrr…
“Just a John” was pretty interesting. Mostly it made me understand more clearly why watching pornography isn’t that different from paid sex: the reason is completely analogous as to why watching child porn isn’t that different from child rape. Watching porn boosts the industry, and at the end of the line, some female actors will be involved. It’s just a question of how indirect the payment is.
The second important point seems to be that porn-watching men should feel guilty since porn, statistically speaking, affects male-female relationships in a way considered negative, e.g. the affinity for sexual criminality in the vinicity of SOBs, and the increased staff harrassment at porn-supplying hotels.
Well, methodologically, it makes sense. I only object at the writer’s way of using vague terminology such as feminism, patriarchy and male supremacy.
But still, we’re facing the age-old question: should policies be derived from statistics, or should policies be based on principles? This is a huge methodological question. For example, if non-selective immigration (“open borders”) can be shown to increase crime, should it be limited? In our world, the methodology seems to be chosen rather arbitrarily, best-fitting to one’s current needs.
Ms_xeno: thanks for the link. I found it interesting, though I had some problems with it. Might be easy for us to get side tracked here tho. I have created a thread on my own blog which quotes your post, links here, and replies. I thought Amp would appreciate us taking the conversartion elsewhere.
http://moderatelyinsane.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-porn-causes-rape-thing.html
Sailorman: it’s interesting to see how you have managed to be the final twist in the conversation, turning us to a theoretical examination of the causal link between porn and rape. You’re steering quite heavily towards no link; yet the premise of D’Amato’s research (for Northwestern’s School of Law no less) is that there is a direct linkage between men’s use of porn and a decreased propensity of the same population towards rape. Why aren’t you addressing *that* theory?
Most feminists will not take D’Amato’s weak research as proof of anything. What feminists address, which D’Amato quite blatently dodges, is the effect of porn on the continuum of heterosexual sex. As far as I could see, he never addresses the effect of porn on how female viewers of porn define rape. If in any given couple the male and female view porn together, it is highly likely that the practices in porn become incorporated into the normative sexual practices that the couple engages in. From the majority of word of mouth experiences that women have with their porn-viewing male partners, this much is obvious: the couple’s sexual practices become blurred with the male’s expectations borne from his porn viewing. He expects anal sex or other physically uncomfortable practices; he expects her to “normally” resist his new practices; he is encouraged to think that his initiation is tacit consent on her part. The latter being an important sexual paradigm to address.
What happens socially, if you go ahead a drop your love affair with “theory”, is that rape becomes something defined by that population most likely to rape. Porn, whether in the making of it or the viewing of it, firmly places women in the recepticle role: she is the one upon which the male porn actor or the male masturbator is releasing his sexuality. His sexuality is played out **on** her, whether by the porn actor or the man ejaculating onto her picture. At some point, either in the creation or consumption of porn, every man blurs her sexuality, her body, and *her* into his sexuality.
So then we get to the tricky linkage between porn and rape. Maybe we can argue for fifty years about the finely split hairs. But what is obvious to me, in just looking at the words “porn” and “rape” is that both promote an in-common sexuality. The *only* difference, from my theoretical stand-point, between porn and rape is the female’s consent to the sex act. And, as I outlined above, porn serves as the social wedge that continually wears down the boundary and definition of female consent. And what a place this is for heterosexual male sexuality: that the only defining difference between porn and rape is consent. The acts don’t change, the male doesn’t alter his sexuality, and the male reaches the same sexual release in both porn and rape.
All that is different is female consent.
And that’s really fucking sad.
Q,
Yes, the only difference between rape and non-rape is consent. Whether that sex occurs in porn or not, that’s still the definition. That is pretty pointless though, seeing as the DEFINITION of rape is, in essence, “sex without consent.” What’s sad about that?
And this is just silly:
The acts don’t change, the male doesn’t alter his sexuality, and the male reaches the same sexual release in both porn and rape.
well, the acts are different: One is rape, and one is not. The sexuality of the parties isn’t really relevant; the fenale doesn’t alter her sexuality either. And though the male orgasms in both, it’s for different reasons: One is sexual, and the other is about power.
If I read between the lines, it seems you’re promoting the viewpoint that there is some sort of “objective line” beyond which it is automatically rape even with consent. Otherwise, i’m not sure what your protests regarding “moving consent” are apposite to.
I’m familiar with that viewpoint, which I think of as along the lines of “no woman can really enjoy a blowjob” and so on. But again, I don’t see how that is relevant to the question…?
I can see you feel strongly about porn BEING RAPE. But I think that you are missing the issue. Just because something IS rape doesn’t mean that WATCHING IT will either make men more or less likely to rape on their own.
“Just because something IS rape doesn’t mean that WATCHING IT will either make men more or less likely to rape on their own. ”
Enjoying something that one knows or thinks is likely to be rape is definitely a part of the mix in the calloused views of men towards women and rape. How many men have enjoyed Deep Throat knowing that it is rape? How many men defend porn and prostitution knowing how often women are abused and raped in these industries? When these men consume porn, do they stop to think what was very likely to have happened in the production of what they are consuming? Does the idea that the actions they are observing could very well be rape interfere at all with their enjoyment of those very actions.
Regarding consent, there is no clear line between consent and non-consent. Just like there are varying degrees of force, there are varying degrees of consent. Porn just pushes the border of what is generally regarded as consent towards an acceptance of greater force – away from “eagerly willing” and towards “unwilling submission”. It also adds to greater disbelief of a rape allegation even when there are physical injuries, so that just a little blood or just a little discoloration is seen as being indicative of not a rape.
I believe I said that rape and porn are part of a continuum of sexuality, with the defining marker being women’s consent, and not with any inherent difference between the physical acts of male sexuality as it pertains to porn and rape.
How do you know that the female hasn’t altered her sexuality, especially when her sexuality is almost entirely formed from the reference point of male heterosexual fantasy?
As for the different reasons for male orgasm, why would that make a difference from the female perspective in regards to rape and porn? In both instance a woman is *used* to produce that orgasm, so therefore it’s her *use* which is relevant to her, not the reason or the hidden meaning behind male orgasm.
I’m not talking about qualifications for rape. I’m talking about a continuum of male heteroseuxal sex that make female consent the defining difference between porn and rape. One would think that men might want to be the ones whose acts and sexual choices defined that, but it is hard to objectify women and maintain a wide a varied sexuality. Therefore, because woman is objectified to meet male demands, her consent becomes the defining line between porn use and rape. It isn’t her body that makes the difference, or her availability, or her desire, or her sexual satisfaction: it is her consent.
That much is obvious in the majority of rape trials and every time that porn is bandied as “free speech” without regard to the making of that “speech.”
Well, that’s what we’re debating, isn’t it? Where do you get the “definitely” part? And how much of a “part of the mix”?
I’ll ignore “prostitution” here as that’s not this thread topic. I think most consumers of porn DO NOT KNOW (or seek out knowledge) of what occurs backstage. The most they are likely to find out is through “interviews” and “articles” in which the stars espouse their love of the porn industry, sex, and acting.
90% of the time: nope. That may be a Bad Thing, but you cannot ignore that reality when you’re talking about the “porn causes rape” claim. Porn is a fiction. The porn industry tries very hard to make the public face be that of pure voluntary sex on camera for money (and is quite successful at it.)
I think it WOULD. If they had that idea, which they don’t, as discussed above.
What are you trying to say here? I’m not sure if you’re talking about porn causing rape, or whether you’re trying to change the subject to it somehow afffecting the potential jurors’ attitudes towards an accuser. those are pretty different things.
Q, you’re reciting a neutral legal standard as some sort of tautology and suggesting it supports a certain viewpoint.
But it doesn’t.
So when you say
it makes no sense.
Sure, you’re right… IF the rapist is a male with a female victim. And if the victim is male, then it’s HIS consent that is the “defining difference”. And if both are female…
I mean, come on: You can try and spin this any way you want. But the statement “nonconsensual sex is rape; consensual sex is not rape” is not inherently patriarchal or biased no matter how you parse it. There is no magic code which will show that “consensual sex is rape” is set up to screw women for the advantage of men, or porn, or rapists.
I have no idea what you are saying here with respect to ‘varied sexuality’, or at least I can’t place it in context.
um, yeah. I mean, the LEGAL definition of rape is petty important in a LEGAL trial. Again: that is a good thing, right? DO you have an alternate suggestion?
I certainly haven’t raised that argument in this thread. You brought it up yourself a while back though.
I think we’re talking two different things here Sailorman. You’re talking about definintions of rape per se. I’m talking about the continuum of porn and rape that is otherwise known as male heterosexual sex.
I am specifically talking about male on female rape and heterosexual male consumption of porn. I am specifically talking about the objectification of women and the use of female bodies to gratify male sexual release — even if that sexual release is masked as anger or power — and how the single most important definer between rape and porn, AS PER MALE DEFININTIONS OF SUCH, is the consent of women.
How many men say “oh, but she consented to the porn! It was her choice!” as the litmus test for their consumption of porn and the perpetuation of a sexuality based on the objectification of women? It’s a pretty standard argument, and not one I came up with myself. I’m simply turning that lens back around onto male sexuality and saying it’s a pretty weak thing if consent is what use hinges upon.
I could think of quite a long list myself of things men might do or believe that would prevent them from consuming porn or raping, so I think it’s telling that consent is about the only damn one that men trot out.
But, yes it does. If all men have to worry about is female consent, then they don’t really have to give two figs and a rat’s ass about what women might desire, no? You’re setting up a pretty clear picture of exactly the male sexuality that I’m talking about, where male desire is played out per definition by men, and women’s desire’s don’t need to be considered or entertained as long as consent is given.
Women consenting to male desire is NOT female desire. Women consenting to male sex acts is not female sexuality. It only becomes so in patriarchy and in a gendered hierarcy of power, when consent is stripped down to utilitarian “yes’s” and “no’s”.
Q, while I’m happy to have a theoretical or specific discussion of porn, rape, porn-caused-rape, or what have you, I read this:
and it doesn’t seem likely. If you are stuck on the position that all sex between men and women is porn, rape, or both, let’s just agree to stop here. It seems a waste of time otherwise.
Well, that’s unfortunate. When I say “continuum”, what do you interpret that to mean? And why do you come to the conclusion that I mean all sex = porn/rape?
Sailorman: you seem to really want to divorce porn and rape from male sexuality; to create some sort of safe space where those things exist theoretically, but with little to no impact on sexuality overall.
Comparatively, young girls and women are taught that porn and rape *will be* a part of their normative sexual and social lives. I mean, all you have to do is look at the My Space brouhaha from last spring to see how porn and rape are *normative* for young women seeking outlets for their sexuality. Even if they aren’t raped or exposed to porn, they know they are vulnerable to both because, get this, porn and rape are more important to men then young women’s healthy sexuality. It’s pretty obvious.
Porn and rape go hand in hand with male heterosexuality. Women know this. Why would you deny that?
The consent talk reminds me of the radical feminist analysis that, according to men’s standards for consent, a corpse can consent to sex because it doesn’t say no. Men have framed the consent issue such that the default position for females is an eternal yes with silence meeting men’s standards for ‘consenting to sex’.
No, it really doesn’t. Cans of tuna come with “dolphin free” labels because tuna-eaters care about dolphins. Movies come with disclaimers that no animals were hurt in the making of the films. Pornography comes with advertising playing up the violence, lack of women’s consent, and vulnerability of youthful “girls girls girls!” (never “women women women!”) Pornographers BRAG about how they fucked that teen virgin bitch’s ass so hard she couldn’t sit for days. The most popular pornography is teen porn with its barely legal porn, lolita porn, twinkie porn, etc.
These porn ads came unsolicited to my Hotmail account. Notice how pornographers have picked up on the most effective ways to sell pornography to average porn-users:
My mom sucked my penis and i liked it
nude pictures of my little sis jenny
young & doing it for the 1st time
Bloody first times
Crazy Girls MAKE it fit..
why get a pro, get a first timer
Hidden shower cams
Tight hot teens
Riding n blowing big Dicks for the first time
bathroom cameras
Blonde…Hardcore models get Slammed..
Check Out These Amateur Teen Sl-uts Begging F…
Sleeping Teen Girls Being Screwed
Seduced….Blondes get Abused
wild lolitas
Check Out These Amateur Teen Sluts Begging F…
Watch These Hidden Shower Cams Of Hot College…
Drunk..College girls get taken Advange of.
Hot Teen Lesbian Threesomes After Mom Leaves
Dirty,Amateurs,
Shocking hole stretching
Watch These Sloppy Teen Girls Get It All Over
DEsperate..Mature Blondes..do anything..
MutantDicks—SheIsScared
This one came from “Pussy Stretchers” into my Hotmail inbox on Aug 19: BigDicksRipSmallChicks. It’s as if cans of tuna came with labels saying, “Now with more slaughtered dolphins than ever!”
And that’s just the words used to sell pornography. I’m sure the smart feminist women who see the submissiveness of a model’s tilted head and the passivity implied by elipses could do some great analysis on the subtle somatic connotations of gag factor, bukkake, double-anal, and gang bang pornography if they wanted to. Most won’t even try.
Frankly, I can’t blame them for wanting to avoid having such pornographic images burned into their head forever. One picture from a gay male porn magazine especially haunts me: two male figures, one baby figure, no hands. You cannot imagine what pornography is unless you look at it, and too many feministes are okay with their boyfriends using pornography because they’re unwilling to look for themselves at the images their boyfriends use to masturbate.
“I think most consumers of porn DO NOT KNOW (or seek out knowledge) of what occurs backstage.”
I have myself told men about the prevalence of abuse and rape in the sex industry. I have witnessed others telling men the same thing, citing studies, statistics and individual cases. Yet these men wilfully ignore all that and continue to defend their use of sex workers. Just look at yourself, man. I don’t know if you use porn or not but you are definitely defending it and its consumers. So don’t try to pretend that your typical/average man is just so innocent, he really doesn’t have any idea about the abusiveness of the sex industry. More like, HE DOESN’T CARE. He wants to get off no matter what the cost to women and girls is. That is what objectification is – when the willingness and desire of the sexually objectified person is not considered to be important. Where one only needs to trot out a legal definition of consent as justification for sexually using unwilling women, safe in the knowledge that lack of consent is extremely difficult to prove in court (and made increasingly so by the beloved porn).
“Q, while I’m happy to have a theoretical or specific discussion of porn, rape, porn-caused-rape”
You have been told of cases where porn availability has led to increases in sexual assault and harrassment. You have been cited studies that shows a connection between SOBs and rape. You have been cited studies that show how exposure to porn leads to increased callousness towards women and rape. Yet you ingore all that, deny all the evidence, and then claim that you want to seriously discuss whether porn causes rape. Looks like you just want to insulate porn from criticism.
My response to Sailerman’s comments about consensual and nonconsensual being the only determining factor in defining rape turned out to be so long that I put it in it’s own post on my blog.
Abyss2hope: Consent In Porn Teaches Dangerous Lesson
Over on his own blog, Sailorman wrote:
Not to me, it’s not. I didn’t waste any time reading any of your response after that. Furthermore, I won’t be reading any more of your comments on this issue, Sailorman. I don’t see any point in pursuing a debate that’s based upon an equality that doesn’t actually exist.
Qgrrl wrote:
Pretty much. I found Abyss’ post in her own space very encouraging, too. Particularly this part:
Perhaps a few men will let that sink in for awhile, before they continue to argue in only a detached manner about something that obviously affects them so personally.
Well damn, ms: If you’re not even going to do me the courtesy of reading my entire response and understanding what I said in context: why respond at all? And why respond to my blog HERE? That is an oddly fucked-up tactic of argumentation.
Because I wanted you to understand why I wouldn’t respond further.
Because an adult male of reasonable intelligence –who yet insists that men and women in this culture are “equal” when it comes to discussing rape and where it comes from– needs to understand that his insistence on a dishonest tactic is why I don’t feel comfortable posting in his space.
Ask yourself: In the myths of our culture that teach us how men and women should properly relate to one another –and porn is a huge part of that mythology– do you honestly think that men and women equal hours playing the role of aggressors ? That a woman who plays the role of aggressor is depicted in the same positive light that a man is ? If your answer is “yes,” I don’t know what culture you grew up in;But I do know that it’s not the one that I grew up in.
That sentence should have been:
do you honestly think that men and women SPEND equal hours playing the role of aggressors ?
Sorry.
Of course not. I have never–and would never–say such a thing.
In the example you attacked, I was talking about the distinction between what happens during filming (rape/not rape) and what a viewer sees (looks like rape/doesn’t look like rape). I was discussing that I thought one could have any of the four possible options in the 2×2 matrix. I was explaining why I thought only the “looks like rape/doesn’t look like rape” options were relevant in the context of discussing VIEWERS’ reactions to porn, and why rape is NOT equivalent to “looks like rape” in that context
My “it doesn’t matter what sex the actor is” statement that got you so flippin’ pissed was said in that context, as I made excruciatingly clear (and you ignored). And it’s true: The same filming/viewing matrix exists irrespective of the sexuality of sex of the actors. I can even write it down with blank spaces if you don’t believe me.
You would have perhaps known that, if you’d read the fucking post. And if you’d read what I wrote, instead of setting up some ridiculous strawman.
Keeerist. “Dishonest” my ass. Look in the friggin’ mirror before you start slinging that shit next time.
I think yours are the strawmen, Sailorman. What you ignore, but what feminists point out here in this thread, is that any given viewer can decide they aren’t viewing rape, that it’s just porn, and then make the very inadequte translation to their sex lives where they *think* they are just acting out porn, when in reality they are raping.
Porn desensitizes and blurs the boundaries of what is rape to the viewing audience — that much is so; you’ve said so yourself. Which is, of course, all irrelevant to the women who get raped, no?
“any given viewer can decide they aren’t viewing rape, that it’s just porn”
I remember watching the movie “Clan of the Cave Bear” in high school. When I saw the movie I saw Ayla getting raped by a man who hated her and who relished raping her into silenced obedience, but the boys saw a male role model, a man gettin’ some recalcitrant pussy from an uppity blonde bitch.
For months afterwards a group of boys kept making the hand symbol Ayla’s rapist Broud used to command her to submit to his rapes and laughing over how sweet life would be if we bitch classmates would go as easily ass-up when the hand command was issued to us. There was no ambiguity in the plot; it was quite clearly rape. But to those boys it was just pornography, just sex as most men would have sex with women be, on demand and without any backtalk, like the sex of prostitution.
Prostitution, sex whenever men demand it done as men command it, is the core model of sexual relations between men and women, something the genius feminist writer DeAnander pointed out on another blog last week.
Some feminists truncate this into a form of “All women are whores in patriarchy”, but I’m grateful to clear, intelligent thinkers like DeAnander for digging into the basic building blocks of culture to explain why even many non-feminists say some form of “Being a housewife is like being a whore” even if that doesn’t play out in reality nearly as they imagine it. Conceptually they’re right. As has been said, you cannot separate rape, sexual abuse, and prostitution from the man-made dominant model of sexuality sold in pornography.
Sailorman:
I really don’t see why I should care about this distinction as much as you aparently do. The fact is, it’s possible that Linda Boreman and other women like her had men raping them either on film, or had men coercing them off-camera to the degree where the claim that the women clearly consented is meaningless.
It’s possible –simultaneously– that men who have acted in these films and watched them got reinforcement of cultural norms that say it’s perfectly okay to force a woman to have sex with you.
You can talk about context and “matrixes” and what not until you’re blue in the face, for all I care. But your hypotheticals about how it could be a man on-screen looking as if a woman is forcing him to have sex with her are basically useless in this discussion. The majority of rapes in this culture are men raping women. The majority of rapes depicted in a positive light in this culture –in entertainment– are men raping women.
You claim that my repeated mention of your insistence that we consider a hypothetical symmetry that does not exist in the real world is some kind of diversion. Bullshit. If you didn’t want it remarked upon, you shouldn’t have included it in the first place. You claim it’s not important to the main discussion, but I don’t agree. If it wasn’t important to you, you would have left it out.
Oh, and when I contrast your last little snipe at me here with your brave stance against personal attacks in your own space, I can only laugh.
I remember Clan of the Cave Bear too. (Mostly I remember our female classmates enthusiatically making the handsign to us boys).
If we accept that porn (in all it’s forms) increases violence against women, what is the solution? Every kind of media harnesses sexuality in some form or another, it’s pervasive. Shall we restrict television to news, weather and sports? Clamp down on the internet North Korea-style (i.e. none) and prevent foreign satellite reception?
I *think* that the solution is to keep sexuality legitimate. I would like us to have common cultural standards that encourage healthy, positive methods for men and women to satisfy their natural instincts for sex, in ways that protect their rights without undermining their responsibilities to themselves, their partners or society. Education about the legitimate side of sex, and the availability of healthy means of sexual gratification is the only way to counter a ‘rape culture’, unless you want to talk about becoming a celibate culture.
CJ, you use pronouns peculiarly. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the way you wrote, “our female classmates enthusiastically making the handsign to us boys” feels a bit awry.
Then there’s, “If we accept that porn (in all it’s forms) increases violence against women, what is the solution?”, using an unqualified ‘we’. What we were talking about was media affirming violence against women as sexual excitement, rape, and the way mainstream sexuality plays out with a disturbing number of themes in common with rape myth promoting pornography. Also, pornography is not the same as sex so defenses of pornography should not speak in terms of sexual liberation. It’s commerce and pornographic product liberation being sought; pornographers are in the business of making money, not sexual liberation.
I wanted to come back to something Sailorman had said earlier about it not mattering if prostituted women are raped to make pornography.
The topic was not what proportion of ALL rapes pornography is responsible for, it was the role violent pornography plays in magnifying sexism and fusing violence to an erotic charge such that men are more likely to rape and the male-dominated culture is less likely to take women’s claims of rape seriously. Now if the topic to debate is “rapes caused by pornography”, and all sides of that and all rapes of all women involved with pornography are examined, the number of those women’s rapes caused by pornography would certainly have to be included in the discussion as a not-insignificant number.
Along the lines of not taking claims of rape seriously, it concerns me that you would brush off the large numbers of women who have said they were raped, drugged, and otherwise forced into making an insanely profitable pornographic product for some dudes with cameras to cash in on. Linda Boreman said she was sometimes forced at gunpoint to submit to her rapes, and thanks to a well-funded pr campaign calling her a lying whore fronted by women on the porn biz payroll she isn’t believed, but there are still many women, like these for instance, who are raped to make pornographic products men sell to other men to accumulate gobs of money.
These are not unusual, isolated rape events in the making of pornography but the understandable outcome of capitalism applied to sex as men demand it and are willing to pay for it. Men’s demand for 50 man gangbangs is far greater than the number of women willing to consent to it. The rapes of some number of pornstituted women and girls are necessary to sustain the multi-billion dollar pornography industries as they have exponentially expanded the past few years and subsequently evolved to include more grotesquely vicious woman-hating content.
But there’s a damnable wall of silence surrounding what it takes to make the pornography being consumed so greedily, a silence especially infuriating among liberals who I’d like to think would apply
criticisms of racism, sexism and capitalism to pornography if they were people of integrity. We don’t hear in liberal media about the anal and vaginal reconstructive surgeries common among Southern California pornstitutes who don’t quit after their first porn experience like most, it’s all about the supposedly empowered women who are never so femininely self-assured as when they’re having two dicks stuffed into their anus at once for a porn film to be titled with the women’s libby, “A Cum Sucking Whore Named Jenny.”
Liberal media makes it so easy to forget about the pornography-making sexual assaults of the Linda Boremans, Traci Lords, Carol Smiths, and Natel Kings, lets them quietly slip out of public consciousness as pornography increasingly funds their projects. It’s all interviews with Candida Royalle and Nina Hartley in liberal media, as if they matter one hundreth to pornography what Max Hardcore, Ron Jeremy, and Seymour Butts do, while Traci Lords tells CNN’s Larry King “And when people come up to me just completely with nothing on it, they don’t get where it gets me, and they say, ‘Wow, I have all your old movies, and I love it’, it’s like being…stabbed.” No one talks about Savannah anymore.
Sometimes I want to shout à la Charlton Heston at pornography users, “Pornography is people! It’s people”
I don’t think porn should be banned; freedom of speech includes freedom to convey despicable messages.
But porn sends – indeed, IS – a despicable message about sex, sexuality, and male-female relationships. Porn consumers ought to be made aware that the making of what they are consuming is very likely to have hurt someone, and it would be appropriate for government to make that educational message broadly available.
The fact that porn consumption hurts the consumer too is probably something that can be left to experience, and private advocacy, to disseminate.
“I don’t think porn should be banned; freedom of speech includes freedom to convey despicable messages.”
I think a constitutional argument can be made for criminalizing the production of porn under certain conditions without jeopardizing freedom of speech. These conditions could be:
1. Porn made using people. Prostitution is criminal. So, how is adding a camera to the mix suddenly making it OK? Porn made through computer simulation without using people can be exempt. So, it is not the speech that is criminalized, but using people while making the speech that is criminalized.
2. Porn made for sale. Porn made for free need not be criminalized. The constitution does not say that people have a right to make a profit from free speech.
[Comment removed by Amp.]
:headdesk: :headdesk: :wanders away clutching forehead:
No, okay, first: you know what, ironically enough, it’s “porn” (depending on how you define it of course) that has enabled many a frightened queer person to take a step or two out of the closet, as i have been reminded recently (no, i will not go into details about “how”). Among other things. And no, it doesn’t CATEGORICALLY have to be about male-female relations or anything any more than any other art (yes goddamit) form; the fact that we live in a deeply sexist society… but what the fuck, i promised myself i wasn’t going down this particular rabbit hole again.
Kali – Your first point seems entirely on target to me. It looks like prostitution to me, too. Bust ’em!
Your second point, alas, is covered by freedom of the press. You do indeed have a constitutional right to charge for your content – whether its news or porn or whatever. Cost of freedom, etc.
Belledame – Sorry about the heterocentric assumption, but we are talking about male-female rape. Gay porn’s connection to that seemed pretty tenuous so I ignored it. Red Guardism is probably inextricably entwined with lefty politics; you’ll have to switch teams or (start/keep) disregarding the guard’s opinions on goodthought/badthought. I found it wearying too, and went with option one. ;)
I’m rereading this again, trying to parse out the misinterpretations.
Rape=bad? Yup, duh. Whether it happens in porn or not, rape is bad.
Actress rape while filming= “real” rape? Yup, duh: if someone was raped, they were raped. Putting it on film doesn’t make it “not rape”.
ALL porn = rape? Well, no. Not all actresses are raped when filming porn. Though some would claim it’s all rape for a variety of reasons I don’t want to get into. Let’s agree to disagree on whether porn is inherently rape and whether anyone can consent to acting in porn films.
MOST porn = actresses who get raped? I said “no” but then again I haven’t watched a porn movie in, hmmm, about 15 years or more, and haven’t purchased a porn mag in about the same time. (sorry, folks, to burst your bubble on this assumption). Perhaps I’m wrong on this; I have no particular vested interest in being right. I’m suspicious of statistics supplied by the “all porn is rape” folks as they seem biased, but I’m beginning to think this assumption was wrong.
ACTUAL rape during filming = DEPICTIONS of rape during filming? Nope, don’t agree. They are both bad, for different reasons.
Depictions of rape are bad because the viewer sees rape; rape is “sold” to the viewer. Selling rape is bad because showing fake rape may be more likely to increase actual rape. Or, as Sam notes, “…the role violent pornography plays in magnifying sexism and fusing violence to an erotic charge such that men are more likely to rape and the male-dominated culture is less likely to take women’s claims of rape seriously.”
Actual rape is bad, too, because, someone got raped, which is bad. But it’s not bad for the same reasons as depicted rape, if the film does not also DEPICT rape. If the film itself does not show violence, then the film cannot play that role described above. So a film where someone was raped–but the viewer can’t tell–affects “only” the woman who was raped. It is not inherently more likely to cause MORE rapes unless there is something in the film that “promotes” those actions.
Unless, that is, the viewer knows all about the actual occurrence of the rape. I believe this is very rare. As many have noted, the porn industry is expert at promoting the veneer of “I love to film porn!” and it’s not clear who, other than anti-porn crusaders and perhaps the occasional odd porn consumer, would really know the “truth” behind porn filming.
damn. gtg but don’t want to lose this; will complete it later.
Sailorman, what’s the point of saying, “Not all actresses are raped when filming porn” (besides calling prostitutes ‘actresses’) when no one has made this claim so far as I can see?
You’re quite fixated on this point you’ve invented, which you repeat for the umpteenth time, “I’m suspicious of statistics supplied by the “all porn is rape” folks”
Who are you talking about? What statistics have been supplied that you’re suspicious of?
I just want to see if I’m understanding this.
Amp posts an article about a Northwestern University study claiming that more porn = less rape.
Amp disagrees with this study, but says that according to the best information we have, more porn probably doesn’t = more rape either.
Sailorman says “Well okay, but what about porn that specifically depicts rape as erotic? That may lead to more rape, right? Let’s look at that.”
The sort of general response is “Even porn that pretends to be consentual often involves rape and coercion, and shouldn’t be ignored.”
Sailorman responds with “Well, yeah, but that’s what we already talked about in the first place, and then we’re back to porn’s effect on the incidence of rape being questionable in either direction. I’m trying to specifically think about whether different sorts of porn have different effects on sexual assault rates.”
I guess I don’t see where that’s out of line.
Me neither. Nor with the notion that people who act in porn flicks can be allowed (as they tend to prefer) the designation “actresses” (or “actors.”) It IS acting. It may not be acting you approve of; certainly it often isn’t acting that you tend to find in the Julliard School; but, yes, it is a performance. The physical act of fucking or whatnot may be “real;” certain stunts in mainstream Hollywood flicks, as well as, you know, kissing (which at one point was considered entirely scandalous, you may be aware: real! live! KISSING! on the mouth, even! on the silver screen!), as well as much much heavier stuff is all “real;” the emotions being summoned forth for the sake of the script may or may not be genuinely heartfelt a la Method acting;
and at the end of the day, yup, it’s STILL “acting.”
…oh. if “out of line” is referring to something i had said (since excised from my comment, at Amp’s behest, which i am cool with), that’s, well, not what i meant, any of it; ignore that bit. Something else.
The problem here is that there are two assumptions that are more or less being taken for granted by, well, a number of people, I think; and further, that these assumptions are being conflated.
1) That the actual act of sex in porn flicks is “coerced;” iow that the performers are in fact being abused, raped
2) That the depictions of sex as seen in (most? all? a lot of?) mainstream het porn is highly suggestive of rape being o.k. and is thus pernicious.
Which, well, first of all, these are two different claims, even assuming either or both is actually the case.
belledame:
I don’t presume to speak for the queer community. However, I somehow doubt that Qgrrl, for instance, would consider this statement a justification for the regressive view of human sexuality that is the norm in mainstream porn films. I also think it’s a pretty sorry commentary on the way sexuality is marketed in this society that so many people, regardless of orientation, get their one of their first big windows on human sexuality from consuming porn. I did. Frankly, it still ticks me off that such neanderthal bullshit was the best the culture had for me as a sexually confused kid. And I had an easier time of it than many others.
I’m not interested in a sidetrack to the porn-vs-.erotica-vs.-art question. I freely admit that my definitions of art with sexual content is subjective. But so is everyone else’s, so I’m not going to get bogged down today in defending my definition. It’s true that there is sexual violence in communities that don’t fit the monogamous/heteronormative lifestyle. But homophobia and the other attendant phobias probably make acurate statistics on the subject even more of an uphill climb than they are in the mainstream. Does it follow that a lot of the folks who grew up to experience or perpetrate sexual violence in alternative situations or relationships feel the impact of mainstream porn differently ? Or did they absorb the same destructive bullshit the rest of us did and then unwittingly bring it into the new world they wanted to create ? I don’t know.
At the end of the day, it’s still sex exchanged for money. It’s still sex in a vacuum, mostly bereft of any emotional or spiritual context. It’s still eroticized force and rape or pseudo-rape, marketed to us as an ideal of human relations between men and women. It’s still the collision of a money-obsessed and male-dominant society that places women –the “actresses” and female consumers and bystanders alike– into a narrow box in which whatever power we have is granted us by men and their standards of what we should be.
Oh, and at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty vile that champions of mainstream porn trumpet the fact that “actresses” make more money in the films than do actors. What a sorry-ass commentary that is on what we’re valued for in this culture. To say nothing of the fact that all the money in the world still can’t seem to give “actresses” even the minimal protection of a mandatory condom policy.
Well, you know: I’m not particularly a fan of mainstream porn myself, if it’s not clear by now; it’s just, well, where do you draw the line?
And yes, okay, we don’t have to get into the whole “porn/erotica/education/I know it when I see it” business right now, but: there is still a question, isn’t there, of what is to be done about the general awfulness of mainstream porn, of WHY it is so very awful.
because i think that a lot of us seem to have very very different answers to that.
which are based on rather radically different fundamental assumptions, one or two anyway.
Anyway, that has been my impression, and no, not speaking to/for anyone in particular here.
>Does it follow that a lot of the folks who grew up to experience or perpetrate sexual violence in alternative situations or relationships feel the impact of mainstream porn differently ? Or did they absorb the same destructive bullshit the rest of us did and then unwittingly bring it into the new world they wanted to create ? I don’t know.>
I don’t either, but there is an assumption there, or reads like it, that kind of draws me up short: why assume that such folks ever saw any porn at all?
I mean, okay, I get it: a lot of people feel really really strongly about porn; it’s just, we DO all get that horrific abuse predates widely-available commerical porn by, well, quite a lot, right? Sometimes, you know, I read some people and maybe it’s just my impression based on the, well, passion, but i almost get the impression that people see “porn” as the CAUSE of all such stuff, or, well, a really really big one.
If nothing else, and maybe this is something people agree with already, I don’t know, but I do believe this: You could get rid of every single scrap of sexually explicit material in the world (well, hypothetically; i ALSO believe that that never ever is gonna happen; but assuming it did somehow happen), and -of itself-, that would not even make a shadow of a millimeters’ worth of a dent in the actual rape, abuse, and other expressions of misogyny and/or relational violence in this world.
and that people put -far- too much stock in the power of the thing itself, the porn, to influence peoples’ behavior, for good or for ill.
Sure, some annoying tropes may catch the popular attention, same as they do from more widely-viewed “mainstream” media–silicone tits, orange tans, deep-throating, the charming “hawk a loogie” thing–but. It’s not as though people aren’t more than capable of being abusive -and- of developing, well, particular sexual tastes, let’s say, all on their very own.
if the latter weren’t true, there’d be no such thing as a fetish. or rather: the (more obscure, i am talking about here) fetish porn came out of the people who already had the fetishes, not the other way around.
>At the end of the day, it’s still sex exchanged for money. It’s still sex in a vacuum, mostly bereft of any emotional or spiritual context.>
That’s pretty much most of modern life, though, is the thing. It’s not the sex that’s the problem here; it’s the vacuum. And I think that there are better or at least more ways to go about looking at the causes of that vacuum than the “patriarchal” one.
Besides which, I’ve found some of the most profoundly emotional and, yes, spiritual experiences of my life in, if not porn, certainly among people and experiences whom I rather suspect would be looked on by many here as, well, beyond the pale in any number of ways.
It could be an art. It could be a frigging spiritual calling. Sex, that is. Even for money, sure; even making pictures and videos and doin’ it with strangers and in public and in all kinds of strange ways. Hell, I know people who DO see it that way, who LIVE it; I’ve seen it. It’s bloody rare, sure, but the fact that it exists at all makes me very disinclined to single out “sex for money” as a particular problem -categorically.-
The problem is the system; nu, so, let’s REALLY look at the system. All of it.
I thought we were looking at the whole system. Never mind. I appreciate the measured response. However, I just got some really lousy personal news, so I’m going to have to bail out for now.
If you haven’t read Abyss’ response in her space in full, I recommend it. I think she gives a valid take on how sexism in every day life and the intensified, hyperbolic form of sexism in mainstream porn feed on and reinforce one another.
Thought map time.
How do we all think sexual behavior is learned?
What are the effects of society on sexual behavior?
How does observational learning pass from person to person?
To be honest, I’ve seen more gay males with damaged sexuality due to porn than I have straight women (which is an issue of exposure to different communities, I suppose). If the errant gay male is helped out of the closet by gay porn, it is a given that a corresponding handful more of gay men have their sexuality and sexual choice warped by the widespread use of porn in the gay male community. The majority of the young gay males I knew in college did *not* want to engage in anal sex, either receiving or giving. Yet there was no way for them to express this (other than to their close lesbian compatriots) and there was no way for them to explore alternative sexual outlets due to the heavy pornified expectations that anal sex if fulfilling, only uncomfortable the first time, and is the definitive act that defines one’s status in the gay community (i.e., top or bottom).
Porn works equally for gay male sexuality and female heterosexual sex to force sex into a game of dominance and power. Both types of porn reify acts that are uncomfortable, demeaning, and subserviant — unless one is the dominant actor, in which case porn reifies a quite blatent hedonistic dominance.
belledame, have you ever seen the 1980 movie Fame? There’s a scene where student actress Coco thinks she’s going to a screen test for a movie but the man turns the camera on and tells her to take off her shirt. When she resists he questions her professionalism so she relents, then he tells her to put thumb in her mouth like a little girl and she starts crying. For readers who haven’t the movie, here’s the clip.
I know why Coco started crying, and I believe no one who saw the movie or read the transcript above did so with a bufuddled look on their face because they had no clue why a young actress in that position might cry. How would you finish the statement, “Coco started crying because…”?
Since the normally prolific belledame hasn’t replied, I thought I’d offer this vomitous quote for discussion on how “feminists” who consume and defend pornography can become as desensitized to the rape and torture of women as men who consume and defend pornography.
This is what Avedon Carol of “Feminists Against Censorship” had to say about the UKs proposed criminalisation of possession of violent pornography instigated because a woman was raped and strangled to death by a man who consumed lots of violent pornography (kudos to Nieves and post 149 for this):
There’s a vile trend in popular liberal media calling young women who say they were raped liars, a trend that has appeared recently in such as liberal media as The Nation, Counterpunch, and Clamor Magazine. What I see in this is the burning need to defend men’s rights to unlimited sexual access to women’s bodies in pornography and prostitution taking precedence over women’s human rights, and it makes me angry.
It makes me angry that belledame can repeat the whopper of a lie, recently promoted in Alternet, that being prostituted isn’t very different from being an actress when the flourishing slave trade in prostitutes, early teen age of entry into prostitution, gender of most prostitutes, STDs, drug addictions, pimps, and only about a thousand other glaring differences are evident to anyone over the age of 10 who isn’t choosing to ignore the obvious staring them in the face.
But ignore it they do. They’re not willing to search themselves for the words to answer why Coco cried anymore than belledame is. We women are just supposed to accept that being a whore is the new, progressive, feminist path to female empowerment and equality, and I am frightened for the girls and women being told this lie.
While there’s been a direct correlation researched between people being more tolerant to violence against women after watching violent porn it may also serve as a healthy outlet for those who live with such fantasies on a daily basis. None of this, however, is black n’ white. Why one person can view (sim.) rape films and never commit the offense while another seems incapable of controlling his/her impulses has less to do with what material he/she was viewing and more with how he or she interprets such images. Keep in mind rape satisfies psychological, not physical, needs.
No doubt porn may be the last drop to the bucket for some offenders but banning it would be like banning guns and hoping the problem of violence and murder suddenly vanish. I don’t disagree that easy access to firearms is playing with fire but thinking that it’s the root of violence is absurd. Need I remind anyone that our ancestors had spears in their skulls?
For those interested I suggest taking a look at Japan’s porn industry vs their number of reported rapes. A society that sells soiled underwear in vending machines, Japan is notorious for it’s variety of bizarre porn – one of which is simulated rape. Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country. The reason for that is subject to interpretation but interesting nonetheless.
Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country
“Reported rapes” is accurately stated… but of course even in the western hemisphere, most rapes go unreported.
Do any of us know wether or not that heavy cultural influence is preventing the report of what we in the Western world would consider rape? I don’t have any 1st generation friends from Japan who are willing to talk about this with me so I can’t even gather antectodal evidence. I (with many others reading this) read Memoirs of a Geishia and was very morally confused at the end. Was it systemic rape of thousands of women or was it prostitution or was it something “better” or “worse”?
In response to Wookie:
In a personal opinion, I think Japan has a low number of reported rapes due to it’s emphasis on women being honorable to their man. My ex-girlfriend (tear) would describe how the mother of the house she was staying at wouldn’t join the family for dinner and this was a normal custom. I always wondered if (the mother) snacked or really did wait till the meal was done to begin hers. A sort of silent protest… anywho… It’s quite possible that this has contributed to a passive female population. In criminology we might be able to equate this with what is formally known as “learned helplessness”. Much like everything, however, there’s usually more than once contributing factor.
The most common reason why rapes are not reported in the western world is due to it being a “personal problem”. The most common reason why the rape was reported is to “prevent further attacks on the victim”. When we look at the facts and see that most rapes occur between two people known to each other it’s not hard to believe. I’m willing to bet not many people know that even though people are a couple a person can still be raped. Many of us have this idea that rape is always violent. Simply not true. Rape can consist of cunnilingus. No consent to ANY sexual touching is sexual assault – period.
Were you able to write this with a straight face?
See, this is what I think porn does vis-a-vis violence against women: it allows someone to write, without any sense of irony or even social dis-ease, about “healthy” outlets for male violence against women.
Hah. Hah. hah hah hah ha.
hah
like omg hah
you know…
’cause it’s all about what’s good for men.
Very straight actually. I tend to have a somber tone to my face at all times. Comes from being in the field of criminology I suppose.
What I think you forget is that women consent to being in simulated rape films. You also forget that some women fantasize about rape and don’t mind being in that position because a fantasy is A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT. Unlike actual sexual assault.
In criminology we have a saying, “in every rapist’s home you’re likely to find rape-type porn. But in every home with rape-type porn you’re not necessarily going to find a rapist.” When you combine recent studies that show virtually 60% of men would rape if they could, without a doubt, get away with it, and then add the reality that not nearly 60% of men have ever raped, it’s clear that there are plenty of individuals who can maintain a healthy normal life without feeling the need to cross that line despite having such fantasies.
An outlet that doesn’t hurt anyone in society and permits the person with fantasies with a form of release is perfect normal and safe. I see this as being no different than female domination videos. One might even say martial arts and ring-boxing are similar ways for violent people to burn a little steam. But I suppose that when one matrial artsist flips out and beats a guy it’s time to go Jack Thompon on the Shoalin Temple, right?
Fantasies exist and are a normal part of human nature.
Just an assumption but I’m pretty sure men are the ones mainly fueling the porn industry. In that case, yes, it’s all about what the man wants. Supply and demand are facinating things…
What you forget, son, is that even if a woman consents to it, the man/men is still willing, on his little part alone, to inflict pain and harm. Doesn’t say much for men, does it?
And you still didn’t debunk the “healthy” part of your quip.
Furthermore, just in case you’re not following the bouncing ball very well, just because one woman in one particular “simulated” rape scene consented to male violence DOESN’T MEAN JACK SHIT ABOUT MEN’S PROPENSITY TO FANTASIZE BRUTALITY and PLAY THAT FANTASY OUT ON get this OTHER WOMEN.
Do you care to really delve into “healthy” outlets for violence?
Is that kinda like video games, disgruntled male youth, and the current war in Iraq, with Iraqi civilians just being a “healthy” outlet for America’s youth so the rest of us quaint civvies can rest comfortably at night?
Ah, shite. In a nutshell son, have you read the thread?
Regarding the low reported rape figures from Japan, a study by John Dussich says this in the study’s abstract:
A 1994 study by Mieko Yoshihama (Yoshihama M, Sorenson SB. Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by male intimates: experiences of women in Japan. Violence & Victims 1994;9:63–77.) found that 43% of Japanese women surveyed indicated that they had been forced to have sex, and 15% said that they had been forced to have sex by the use of physical violence. (The sample was not representative, however).
A bit OT, but as a martial artist, I had to respond to this:
‘One might even say martial arts and ring-boxing are similar ways for violent people to burn a little steam. But I suppose that when one matrial artsist flips out and beats a guy it’s time to go Jack Thompon on the Shoalin Temple, right?”
First, ring boxing and martial arts are quite different in that ring boxing, as currently ruled, allows levels of physical damage and danger that no legitimate martial arts school or competition would allow. (“Kick boxing” in Vegas does not count as “legitimate.”) When boxers start wearing head gear and when head shots are taken out of competition, then they’ll belong in the same discussion. Meanwhile, professional boxing is far more akin to a public execution, i.e. not something sane people can watch or condone. (Yes, that’s a value judgment. I think grown ups get to make those.)
Second, martial arts is, literally anti-violence. It’s certainly tied in a strange waltz with violence, but only as a 180 turn away from it. And, to extend the metaphors, martials arts is to violence as loving, consentual sex is to rape. That martial arts is an honorable pursuit in no way excuses or condones the indulgence in violence, either as fantasy or in other realities. Yes, the “Shaolin Temple” should be censured if it were teaching people how to beat up each other, under any circumstances, using only “might makes right” as a criterion. Just as loving sex, consentual sex, marriage and all the other sexual arrangements between willing parties are legitimate and ethical, so is martial arts. And, just as beating up someone for reasons other than self defense is immoral and unacceptable, so is rape. And, just as a fantasy about beating people up for no reason other than to be a “tough” guy is pretty damn sick, so is fantasizing about rape.
I need a bath. (I’m quite grateful most schools are on the lookout for people who think martials arts is about violence. My school also does background checks to weed out potential weirdos. Potential students, pay no attention to “laughing’s” misunderstandings. Trush your instincts. The overwhelming majority of martial artists are sane, peaceful people.
Q Grrl:
Laughing@UALL:
A somber, serious criminologist writes to a discussion about rape and porn and the nic he chooses is — get this– Laughing at you all in leetspeak.
Something doesn’t quite add up, methinks.
Why would you remove a post defending martial arts. I don’t understand in the least what your criteria are. You’ve left “laughing’s” posts up, even though they’re far more incendiary.
What’s going on?
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[throws flowers to Josh the brave. Oops. They’re plastic. I’m on a budget. ]
For those interested I suggest taking a look at Japan’s porn industry vs their number of reported rapes. A society that sells soiled underwear in vending machines, Japan is notorious for it’s variety of bizarre porn – one of which is simulated rape. Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country. The reason for that is subject to interpretation but interesting nonetheless.
I lived in Japan. I can tell you that women who report rape–or even being harassed on the train–are blamed for what happened, and are often dragged through the mud. Rape isn’t reported, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Though I do find the “put up with the misogyny so that you won’t get raped” fallacy oh-so-charming.
And human trafficking is a huge problem in Japan. But I suppose it would be rude to say that any of the women and girls being tricked into selling their bodies count as victims of rape.
Also, maybe when Bitch/Lab is done playing “There there” with poor old Josh, Josh would like to come back and answer my question as to why he’s still shuffling papers for a living when he proudly proclaims that his pron stint was not at all degrading compared to it. Oh, and maybe if I live to be a thousand, Bitch/Lab herself will come back and explain to me, at long last, how a proudly Socialist woman like Nina Hartley reconciles her supposedly humane political beliefs with her cold-hearted public tesitmony against a mandatory condom policy in the mainstream pron industry.
I think I’ll take up knitting. I could become the Christo of knitting and hit every park in Portland with huge dense layers of delicate yarnwork before either of them ever comes up with a straight answer, I’ll wager. :/
NoPornNorthampton.org provides a variety of rebuttals to arguments such as Professor D’Amato’s:
How Spread of Porn Could Give the Illusion that Rape is in Decline (explicit language)
Indications from books like Unhooked or Female Chauvinist Pigs suggest that many women in our present age, understandably, prefer to conceive of themselves as powerful and in control, not as victims. Female members of the porn industry like Lizzy Borden fuel this image of woman as dominator, as opposed to the dominated. A woman acknowledging she was made to have sex against her will, whether to police or to a survey-taker, would not be compatible with this self-image. We observe that sexual assault is both widespread and a substantially underreported crime…
We can hypothesize that as women adopt the promiscuous, callous lifestyle advocated by porn, they will be less likely to report instances of rape. This might be in part because porn trains people to expect discourteous behavior in sex, and in part because of widespread beliefs that ‘loose’ women have little credibility when it comes to accusations of rape. A raped woman has every reason to fear that her sexual history might be mercilessly worked over in court (and/or public opinion) during a trial, especially if that history is long and messy. For reasons like these, one cannot conclude from mere correlation that porn truly reduces the incidence of sexual assault. There is no unambiguous logical connection between the two…
It is easy to see how the propagation of rape myths would decrease reporting of rape. The victim might not be sure that an actual crime occurred, or even if they did, might not feel that our legal system will recognize their injury.
United Kingdom: A Glaring Counter-Example to the Theory that Internet Porn is Cathartic
Law professor Anthony D’Amato, and more recently Todd Kendall of Clemson University, have attempted to correlate increased Internet penetration with decreasing rates of rape. Since the Internet is a major vector for porn, they suggest that more porn in the home means fewer people will rape. In short, they claim that porn is cathartic.
We have already discussed some of the flaws in this argument, the origins of which go back over 30 years. A new counter-example has recently come to our attention. Between 2000-2005, the number of Internet users in the United Kingdom increased from 15.4 million to 35.8 million (InternetWorldStats). During this time, the overall population only grew from 58.8 million to 59.9 million, so the proportion of Internet users in the population grew from 26% to 60%.
If the D’Amato/Kendall theory was correct, you would expect a measurable decrease in the number of reported rapes. However, the opposite trend was seen. In the period 1999-2000, just under 8,000 rapes of a female were reported in England and Wales. This level then increased every year until by the 2005-2006 period, over 13,000 rapes of a female were reported (Home Office Crime Statistics). This was during a time when the overall population increased by just 2%.
In Scotland, the trend of recorded rapes is similar. After dipping slightly between the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 reporting periods, rapes recorded by police increased every year through the 2005-2006 reporting period (Scottish Executive). Overall, recorded rapes increased from just under 600 in 1999-2000 to just under 1,000 in 2005-2006.
Government officials in the United Kingdom believe that some of the increases in recorded rapes are due to improved reporting of crimes. Factors like these underscore the risks of drawing simple conclusions from apparent correlations between changes in reported crime rates and changes in other phenomena. The challenges are especially great when discussing heavily underreported crimes such as rape and domestic assault.
When combined with personal testimony and scientific experiments, the balance of the data suggests that porn stimulates rape and confuses people about what’s acceptable behavior (such as whether to take no for an answer during sex). It certainly cannot be concluded that porn reduces rape.
Porn and Sex Crimes in Other Countries: The Historical Experience
Porn advocates are usually quieter about the results of studies of Sweden, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, where ”as the constraints on the availability of pornography were lifted…the rates of rape in those countries increased.”[35] For example, in two Australian states between 1964 and 1977, when South Australia liberalized its laws on pornography and Queensland maintained its conservative policy…over the thirteen-year period, the number of rapes in Queensland remained at the same low level while South Australia’s showed a sixfold increase.”[36]
This article and the comments made by those who have read it have been a real eye opener for me. I admit that I have viewed pron, but it never occured to me (well, I think it DID occur to me, but I just convinced myself otherwise) what the women who perform in pornography potentially go through.
I remember seeing a pron video of two women performing fellatio on two men: the men were VERY rough and would occasionally spit in the face of these women (at least one of them did, I stopped watching after awhile). The women looked uncomfortable with the whole thing and I got really uncomfortable, so I stopped watching.
I have also noticed how desensitized pron makes people, as shown by the number of disturbing comments I have read on various pron sites and the idiotic behavior my fellow men display at my school. It does not matter whether or not it is drawn, the comments made on some of these pictures and vids are filled with misogyny and are really disturbing.
Then there is this charming little ad I came across that said this: “Accidental Discovery Exposes Loophole In Female Psychology: Learn 3 WEIRD questions that instantly make girls want to fuck.”
This is obviously a scam, but I find it disturbing that the majority of men (even those who are NOT gullible enough to fall for such things) will think how awesome it is to MAKE a woman want to have sex with them.
It is ALWAYS sad to hear the way (an unfortunate amount of) males treat women as sexual OBJECTS be justified by saying, basically, “Boys will be boys” or “Men have needs.”
Though, I am at a loss for how to actually change this attitude (or at least help change it).
Also, Sheelzebub , if you read this, I am glad you posted that bit about how Japanese women are blamed for rape commited against ; it cleared up a lot of questions I had as to why Japan, being the biggest producer of pron (especially rape), had such low rape statistics (like a lot of defenders of Japan’s sexual openness like to point out).